Dr. Phillips pilot lands plane at every Florida airport

Touching down at Miami International Airport in June 2017, local pilot John Lewe felt a sense of pride and accomplishment run through him.

First, it was because he didn’t mess that opportunity up or make any mistakes in the process. But mostly, it was because he knew he’d finally accomplished his goal of taking off from and landing at all 102 airports in Florida.

FASCINATION OF FLYING
Lewe, a Dr. Phillips resident, grew up in Chicago and first became enamored with airplanes when he was about 7 years old.

“My parents had gotten divorced, and my mother had remarried a South African,” he said. “I ended up spending a lot of time flying across the ocean in a 747, and it was just the coolest thing. My dad stayed in Illinois, and my mom had moved to South Africa with her new husband, so I would go back and forth in the summers and Christmas and whatnot.

“It was so neat, and back then they actually let you go up in the cockpit,” he said. “Being a 7-year-old kid in the cockpit of a 747 — it was the coolest thing.”

His fascination with aircraft and the piloting aspect never left. In 1997, when he was 27 years old, he decided to fulfill his lifelong dream of obtaining a pilot’s license.

Lewe completed his first solo flight at 12.3 hours and later received his license at 65 hours. But flying in Chicago presents the challenge of a limited amount of good flying weather — especially for someone who mainly flew on Saturdays. He increased his total flying time to 98 hours but then moved to Orlando with his wife, Rachel.

The couple had their daughter, Kate, and for 14 years, he put flying aside to focus on his family and his business, a software company called Aspire Technologies Inc. But as his daughter grew up and his company became more established, the itch to get back into flying came in 2015.

He found a flight school and instructor in 2015 to refresh his piloting skills and invested in his four-seater plane, a Cessna 172S, currently based at the Odyssey Aviation FBO at Kissimmee Gateway Airport. Although he owns it, he leases it out to a local flight school, Aerostar Training Services, which helps mitigates his costs.

After easing back into the world of aviation, he decided to challenge himself with a new goal — to take off from and land at all 102 airports in Florida.

“You can learn things in books, but the only way to get real-world experience (is) actually talking to people and experiencing things (and) just to get out there and do it,” Lewe said. “I figured, what better way to do that than to basically just go to every single airport? I was going to talk to different controllers and controlling agencies and towers, learn different procedures and different things. It’s a really great way to learn something.”

REACHING NEW HEIGHTS 
Because there is no defined list of all the airports across the state, Lewe researched online and found bits of information, which he then put together to discover that there are 102 public, paved airports in Florida. He set off on his journey in March 2015.

“Florida has so many interesting airports, so rather than just practicing with the instructor in the pattern and practice area, I asked the instructor if we could start doing some cross-country flights to give me more of the hands-on, actual practical experience I would need,” he said.

In aviation, a cross-country flight is defined as one that spans at least 50 nautical meters from the original point of departure. He and the instructor went on cross-country flights doing touch-and-go landings and take-offs. After the first eight airports, Lewe started out on his own.

“To be efficient in landing at all these airports, each trip was a string of airports,” he said. “The largest string was 10 airports in four-and-one-half hours. Doing those strings was a technical challenge that really sharpened my skills. … If I just flew to one airport a weekend, this would have taken me eight years or something like that, so I had to string them together. I would geographically decide which airports to fly to in a string in order to get me the most efficient route of getting the most number of airports.”

He flew just about every Saturday for two-and-one-half years and captured video footage of his landing at every airport using oPro HERO4 cameras in the cockpit and on the wing. He even got to fly into  a restricted airspace once as he did a low approach over the 15,000-foot NASA shuttle-landing facility.

FLIGHT FEAT COMPLETE
It all paid off in June 2017, when Lewe landed at his final airport on his list: Miami International. He accomplished his goal with about 250 total hours of flight time logged.

“I was elated,” he said. “It was so neat, because it was such a big airport and you really felt like part of the really professional lair of individuals going through that whole process and doing it right. That felt really good.”

With his original goal accomplished, Lewe now plans to stop at airports with restaurants so he can spend more time getting to know the different airports and the people who work at them.

Eventually, he plans to fly to the Bahamas, which he said will be a great new learning experience because it includes all the requirements for leaving the United States and re-entering by plane.

“When you really think about it, all I did was just day by day took a couple more steps, and then all of a sudden it’s like, ‘Wow, I’ve landed at every airport in Florida now,’” he said. “That felt really good.”